


Abe Sapien and Hellboy Share a Kiss While They Work

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Hellboy (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-21
Updated: 2008-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abe never took his gloves off on a mission without permission again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abe Sapien and Hellboy Share a Kiss While They Work

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for not getting anything racier into this story; sometimes stories end where you'd rather wish they didn't, and so none of the sexy bits make it in. I tried to tell a story about Abe and Hellboy's feelings for each other before Liz joined the team, but it ended up becoming something a bit more complicated than that and also far more focused on Hellboy's place in the world. I think I still managed to achieve what I set out to do, mostly. Except for the porny bits.   
>  If anyone thinks the "creature" as described here looks a teensy bit familiar, blame my brain and its inability to let an idea go. I hope it doesn't detract from your enjoyment of the story in any way, and only enhances it instead.   
> I very nearly didn't get this in on time due to a sudden power outage, so I'd like to thank the forces of nature for being benevolent and considerate enough to give me the chance to hand my story in before deadline. And thank you, dear reader, for reading. I hope you never stop.
> 
> Written for Lazuli

 

 

Abraham Sapien found Hellboy in the wreckage of what was once a bedroom, splinters hanging limply from the crevices of his thick right hand. 

It was not right to refer to the red giant as a 'demon', but Abe felt that the description was hardly inaccurate at the present time: Hellboy was hunched over the broken footboard of an ornately carved bed - or what used to be a bed; now, splintered so the unstained wood showed through like bones, it looked more like a pile of sticks pretending to be a footboard - breathing heavily and his eyes stared a thousand yards deep - and they seemed, faintly, to glow.

The possibility of Hellboy going rogue was not a possibility Abe was unaware of, but it was until now an unconsidered one; of course he had received the top-secret your-ears-only briefing, just like all the rest, and he had dismissed it out of hand, unlike all the rest. Hellboy was more than the demon most people simply assumed he was meant to be. Abe had felt it, in the days before they'd all learned that it was better for him to remain gloved as well as attached to a respirator, and he'd tried to make the others understand, but it had never really worked. In the end, a freak was a freak; a few dissenting voices here and there weren't going to wipe the perception away.

That was the first time Hellboy had offered him a beer, and the first time Abe had to refuse, reluctantly.

Professor Bruttenholm started lending Abe books shortly thereafter. It was the man's way of apologizing - for several things, Hellboy's isolation being only one of many hardships Abe was still adjusting to in his new home.

It had been several months since then, and this was Abe's "first date" - the day he officially made his field agent designation _count_ for something - and he had never considered the possibility that his closest friend might . . . get a little farther out than he was supposed to.

There was no established protocol for what a BPRD agent was supposed to do if Hellboy went rogue in the middle of an operation - the Bureau consesnus was "get the hell out of his way and hope he comes back when he calms down" but they seemed to think that because of their friendship Abe would have better luck. Seeing the rage buckle in the curve of Hellboy's shoulderblades, Abe wasn't so sure.

But he wasn't sure that he understood what was going on, either.

In the end, there was no protocol Abe could follow except his own instinct, which was why there was no one but himself that he could blame for the events that followed.

He placed a bare hand on Hellboy's shoulder.

* * *

The difference between Hellboy's perception and his own was . . . breathtaking; Abe never realized how much he couldn't see, being constrained by his own biology, but the vividness of Hellboy's vision, his sense of _smell_ , was so strong it was almost hallucinogenic. When the sense memory was over, Abe would never be able to look at a gray wall the same way again.

He wondered - did Hellboy understand this gift? Or was it simply - so normal to him compared to all the things about him that others labeled "abnormal" that he had never thought anything of it?

But the memory continued on regardless of his wonderings, and Abe turned his attention back to Hellboy's entry into the room where Abe found him.

* * *

Their mission was supposed to be a simple poltergeist exhumation and exorcism -- an easy op for the new kid, to give Abe plenty of sensory information with a minimal risk of damage incurred. The mansion, such as it was, had been in this family for two generations before the activity first appeared; within the next two generations it had gone from the family home to a place merely maintained by housekeepers to, finally, a historical relic the state needed to clean up for a tourist exhibit by the end of the year. 

Enter the BPRD. 

Hellboy entered the room as carefully as his bulky shape could allow, hands empty and eyes alert. Dust curled up from the floorboards where his coat brushed against the wood. Dust clung on everything: on wood and wallpaper and glass. It inhabited the room and filled the places where people used to be. His tail swished zigzags of clear dark floor into the thick coating beneath his feet. The bed once had curtains that might have pulled close around it; now, though, it was only curtained by spiderwebs. Elaborate carvings of scowling gargoyle faces leered out from the footboard and over the arch of the headboard. On the wall above the bed was a large rectangular discoloration where a massive painting must have hung, and an old, gilded mirror on one of those stands that mirrors usually only came with in fairy tales these days leaned against the wall by a closet. Claws curved around the wheels at the base of the stand, and thorned roses crept up the sides of the mirror. Underneath the dust the glass looked almost black.

"I oughtta hire these guys to do my decorating," Hellboy said, raising an eyebrow and smirking at the sparse, dust-covered furnishings. "Got a real sense of style. If you're into cheap fake Southern Gothic crap."

" _I'll have to give them my wife's number_ ," one of the field agents - Lewis, Abe thought - said, his voice crackling over the belt radio. " _She loves that shit_."

"I'll see what I can do, Lewis," Hellboy said. "I think I found the master bedroom here. Not very masterful, if you ask me. Anybody getting anything on the ghost stuff?"

" _Nothing yet_ ," someone else said. " _Just a whole lot of well-behaved rats and - aaghk!_ "

Hellboy spun and started for the door. His footsteps thundered across the floor. Dust puffed up and swirled around the prints he left behind. "Who was that? -- Emerson, right? Emerson, where are you? Someone check on Emerson!"

" _hhhagk - I'm fine, Hellboy, disregard - just a faceful of cobweb, I wasn't looking where I was going_ ," Emerson said, apologetic in spite of his mouthful of spider leftovers. 

Hellboy shut his eyes tight and bit back anything else he could add. "All right. I'm not getting any signs of possession up here either, but I'll keep looking."

* * *

It was only shortly after that exchange that Hellboy had roared, and knocked the BPRD agent who'd rushed to his presumed aid back out the doorway and into the second floor banister; after they'd confirmed the agent would survive with only a broken rib they'd sent Abe in next.

But that wasn't how Hellboy remembered it.

* * *

Something drew Hellboy to the mirror against the wall - a _memory_ that he couldn't remember and that any other time he'd have ignored, but this was a ghost case and ghosts tended to be privacy-invading little yoiks on their most annoying days. So it was probably a ghost thing. Hellboy didn't carry any of the "ghost stuff" - relics blessed by saints, watermelon seeds, and a bunch of other doodads that attracted or repelled ghosts depending on what kind of haunt they were - because some older ghosts could smell it and wouldn't come out for it, even if the stuff _would_ notice 'em laying around. Besides, this was a poltergeist. Anything it threw at him, he could take it. 

He brushed the dust from the glass and glared at it. Underneath the dust the mirror looked jet-black. Hellboy couldn't even see his own reflection in it. "Okay," he said. "Whaddya want?" 

Nobody answered his question, so he tilted the mirror until he could see something - anything - himself - the room - in its reflection. The light from the doorway behind him spilled out over his shoulders, silhouetting his frame in the dark glass.

"C'mon, I don't have all day, there's a _Golden Girls_ rerun on at 1."

Something stirred in the darkness outlined by his shoulders that wasn't in the room. Slowly, like a hungry flower, it moved and took on definition: pale skin, pale hands, hair like blazing bright snow on a sunny day, its body swallowed by formless black cloth. It came closer but not too close. The shape licked its lips and moved its mouth experimentally, testing the jaw and revealing a mouth that would, if its wearer smiled, be strangely, terrifyingly wide, like it could swallow the world in a single bite. 

"Hhhello," it said. Its voice was rough with disuse and after the greeting it lapsed into silence once more, staring out through the mirror with colorless, red-rimmed eyes.

"Hey." Hellboy waved to the thing in the mirror, grinning with what-is-this-idiot schlocky charm. "What's it gonna take to get you to clear off this property?" 

"In case of emergency, break glass," the mirror thing said, the corners of its mouth curling in a not-smile. "I am . . . tied down, you see." It gestured to something Hellboy couldn't quite make out.

"No, I don't see. What, you're trapped here, like . . . a pet ghost? Why would anybody want to keep a _poltergeist_ around?" Hellboy's eyes narrowed in doubt and distrust. The only reasons he could think of for a thing like that weren't good reasons, and usually involved something fairly nasty going on with either the people or the thing they were keeping. There wasn't anything in the owners' history to indicate any of _that_ kind of occult nastiness in their background, but that didn't mean anything. There didn't have to be records for it to be true. And Hellboy wasn't in the mood for any _surprises_ on this job.

"I have my uses." Another thin-lipped smile.

Helbboy rolled his eyes and shook his head. "No, see, I don't think you get it. I'm out here, free and clear and un-imprisoned. Where you're not. I am the person you want to make _happy_. The mysterious secret-y stuff is not going to make me happy." He folded his mismatched hands over his chest and glared at the mirror. "So can it, Casper. What's to stop me from taking this mirror out of the house? You're trapped in the mirror so you drive the inhabitants nuts, I take the mirror out of the house and suddenly the inhabitants don't go crazy anymore. Is there a problem with that?"

"Several," the mirror thing said, before lapsing into silence again. Just as Hellboy started to grumble its voice cracked back to life. "It's hard to find words. I'd forgotten . . . how to use them, I think."

"Remember faster. Or talk slower. I don't care. Just tell me why the mirror ain't gonna cut it." Hellboy tapped the whorls carved into his right hand and raised an eyebrow.

The creature nodded. It stepped back, visibly collecting itself before attempting to speak. "The mirror isn't - a prison, the way you think of prisons . . . it is a failsafe . . . a key. The house is the prison, and the mirror my only chance of escape." It raised its staring eyes to Hellboy's in desperate fury, reaching for something Hellboy couldn't see. "You _must_ smash the mirror with your hand! You must! You -" Its plea faltered under the force of a protesting throat, and it fell from view for a moment.

"And why would I want to let you out? You ain't exactly a friendly ghost, according to the reports we got." Hellboy looked up at the ceiling. 

"I am not meant to be imprisoned here." The ghost lurched back into the mirror frame and came closer. "I have . . . a _place_ in the world that I cannot fulfill." As it came closer, its eyes focused on Hellboy as if for the first time. An awful, face=splitting smile bloomed on its face. "As do you, Great Beast. As do _you_. Oh, how far you are from what you were made to be . . . it is no wonder I could barely recognize you."

Hellboy recoiled from the mirror instinctively, his hands, which had begun to reach out without his knowing to smash the mirror-cage to pieces, jerking back and away like the mirror was a hot stove top. He recovered his wits several feet from the mirror and glared death at the mirror and the thing held inside it. "I'm not your Great Beast of Anything," he growled. "And I'm definitely _not_ letting you outta that mirror now."

The thing in the mirror inhaled, slowly, and came closer, now; with a shock Hellboy realized that despite jerking away earlier the mirror was no further from him than when he'd stepped close to it originally, or perhaps it had grown bigger . . . it felt, impossibly, like the black glass was in danger of swallowing up the whole room with Hellboy inside despite its remaining confined to the inflexible shape of the mirror every time Hellboy strained his eyes enough to focus on the _shape_ of the thing. 

"Anung un Rama," the creature said, its voice terribly sweet and terrifyingly close. "I have screamed my throat raw in hopes of release, but I would never have dreamed it might come from your hand. We are kin, you and I . . . siblings of destruction and hellfire. You touched my prison door with your hand, Anung un Rama!" Closer. Hellboy felt its footsteps coming closer, soundless and purposeful. "We share a bond closer than those on the surface of the world will ever know. Touching my prison gave me access to your soul: unless you break my mirror with your hand, we will both be doomed forever. You have the gift of destruction! Fulfill your purpose, Anung un Rama, and free me!"

Hellboy roared and felt a fire inside his chest burn as the thing screamed out his name, swinging out at the dark with his fist. It struck wood and the wood shattered under its force. He swung towards the blackness and felt floorboards quake. But he did not swing towards the voice.

"No," he said, his voice thick with rage and denial. " _No_."

"No?" 

Hellboy spun to find the creature standing behind him, dressed in darkness, black-on-black in a grotesque parody of a ringmaster's trimmed coat. As he spun it reached up to adjust the cravat tied at its throat, then reached out to rake its fingernails across Hellboy's chest.

* * *

Abe gasped as he felt the claws sink in and tear his own flesh, but before his hand could jerk away, Hellboy's right hand reached up to cover it in stony warmth and immovability.

The memory . . . continued.

* * *

Hellboy howled and staggered back as the creature tore fabric and flesh from Hellboy's chest, but he recovered and swung out with his left fist, aiming for the side of its face. He - missed, and he stumbled forward into the space where nobody stood. Immediately the creature was on his back, fingers digging into Hellboy's skin through the thick fabric of the coat. Its breath was cold and dead on the back of his neck. 

"I could give you the world, Anung un Rama," it said, quiet as a tomb, "I could give you wine and women and song: I could give you a world where you are loved for what you _are_ , where no one would dare pity you ever again." As it spoke its fingers wandered over Hellboy's frame, tracing the muscles barely camouflaged beneath his coat, tip-tapping like spider's-feet down his chest, lapping up against the edge of his right hand. "I could give you a love, born in fire and flesh, that you don't even know you want. I saw the world born, you fool: all that this life can give you is death. This is not what you want, I can see it in your eyes."

Hellboy stilled, his body going limp and quiet under the creature's touch. He shut his eyes. "What _are_ you?" he asked, once he could trust himself to speak again. 

"Family," it said. It did . . . something with its body that Hellboy couldn't or didn't want to see and then it was splayed across his right shoulder. One hand began to trace the patterns carved into the stony cracks of his arm and Hellboy felt it all the way up in the stabbing pain part of his brain when the carvings began to respond, brightly. "Your body understands . . . humanity cannot destroy what you represent entirely, not what _you_ are . . ."

"I'm not part of your family," Hellboy growled, stomping his feet against the ground and hurling the creature from his shoulder. The glow bleeding out from his fist halted but did not die. 

"You will be," it said, smiling wide enough Hellboy could see the vivid redness of its gums. "Or you will die." It threw itself at him then, and each blow it threw struck home no matter how hard Hellboy tried to strike back first. As the fight continued his frustration only grew.

"Dammit," he muttered, "why couldn't you be a ghost?" 

And only too late he realized he'd instinctively struck out with his right hand. 

The mirror came to pieces under the weight of his fist, gilded roses crumpling as the black glass shattered - and burst outward, propelled by some unseen force until it puffed into dust against the walls, the broken bed, and Hellboy himself.

Someone behind him exhaled and took a step towards him; a hand reached out to clench around Hellboy's arm. 

"Is this the life you deserve?" the creature's voice hissed in his ear. Roaring, Hellboy swung at the source and felt flesh crumple beneath his fist as he sent . . . one of his fellow agents flying instead.

"Oh, _crap_ ," Hellboy said, despair thickening the familiar exclamation.

"You hurt them by living among them, Anung un Rama," the creature said, its arrival soundless - Hellboy's face fell as he realized he should have noticed that fact sooner - the dust beneath its feet undisturbed, as if it didn't - quite - touch the ground the way normal things should. "I can grant you a world where you can know more love than this place will ever give to you . . ."

It was against him then, skin to skin through the layers of fabric that enveloped them both like the fabric wasn't even there, its hands pressing insistently against his flesh, colorless, dry, startlingly _blind_ eyes boring deep into Hellboy's own, and it smiled as it felt the heat burning deep inside his chest.

The kiss forced itself against Hellboy's mouth, against his throat, unbroken, cold-bright skin burning against the smoky, stubbled heat of Hellboy's face, down, down deep into the darkness that Hellboy never asked to fight, a hungry soul-sucking black hole of sex and death and looking into those empty eyes Hellboy saw blue fire and metal teeth and wings made of a hundred eyes and his heart felt like it would burn away under the gaze of those eyes.

* * *

Hellboy's hand nearly crushed Abe's within its grasp before it finally let Abe stagger back. Abe blinked rapidly in awe and confusion, his breath coming in ragged clumps of noise, and found himself leaning against the remnants of the mirror that he'd seen Hellboy shatter in Hellboy's memories.

He had never in his life felt such _passion_ , directed at himself or at anyone, had never felt that kind of malice and love; the lips of another person's kiss were a luxury he could only dare dream for. Even sharing in the experience felt on some level vaguely profane, least of all that the memories had been Hellboy's - "I'm sorry," he said, immediately.

The look Hellboy gave him was as inexplicable as it wasn't reassuring. "For what?" he said, his voice hollow, like all the rage he didn't have anymore had devoured the rest of him and left nothing behind.

"For -" Abe struggled to find the words. "For intruding on what I had no right to share in," he said, but that didn't seem right. 

"If I'd wanted you to stop watching, I'd have shoved you away a lot sooner than I did, Abe," Hellboy said as he turned away to look at the broken bed once more. He didn't say anything to elaborate on that, and Abe slowly realized that he was waiting for Abe's reaction to that statement.

"I - I should have asked. That's - what I did wasn't right," Abe said, fumbling for the words. Everything he said kept tripping up on the sharpness of Hellboy's memories and it made it hard to think . . . "Friends are supposed to ask before they do such things, aren't they?" 

He wasn't sure if Hellboy would understand what Abe was trying to tell him - he wasn't even sure if he deserved to offer such a thing - but slowly, Hellboy turned around to look at Abe. And he stared at Abe, an unreadable expression in his eyes. 

Abe took in a quick breath and pushed himself back into a standing position, smiling as best as he could manage with a face like his own. Smiling did not come easily or naturally to him, but he kept working at it; he felt it would put people more at ease around him if they could see a smile on his face. "We are . . . friends . . . aren't we, Hellboy?"

"Only if you promise never to do that thing you just did with your face around me again," Hellboy said, but the smile creeping over his face ruined the effect of his words completely. He took a deep breath, his tail slapping twice against the ground to snap himself fully back to reality. "I think the house is clean."

". . . are you sure?" Abe looked down at the dust underfoot, then back up at Hellboy, tilting his head and blinking. He did mean more than the dust, of course, but maybe now wasn't the best time. He pulled his glove back on carefully until he was sure it was once more secured in place.

"It said I'd see it again someday," Hellboy said. "And then it left. I know what it feels like now, I'd know if it stuck around." He took a long, shuddering breath. "Anyway. Yeah, it's gone. And I don't think there was anything else in this house. Whatever it really _was_ , I'll bet you ten to one it scared anything else off."

Abe nodded in agreement. He couldn't imagine anything else wanting to remain anywhere close to such a creature for very long. 

"How's the guy I punched?"

"A broken rib and some ugly bruises would seem to be the worst of it," Abe said, spreading his hands wide. "His name was Clay, I believe. I didn't catch his first name."

"I'll have to apologize for that." Hellboy didn't sound like he was looking forward to that. Abe couldn't blame him; Clay would likely hold a grudge against Hellboy for what he'd done for a long time, even after the truth came out - perhaps especially then. 

"If you need me there - for moral support . . ." Abe let the sentence trail off, uncertain of how to end it.

Hellboy chuckled under his breath. "Yeah. Sure. What can it hurt?"

They met each other's eyes and understood each other better than they had before the mission began. Somehow Abe felt that a part of the universe that had been slightly off-kilter had righted itself at last, but he couldn't put a name to what part it might have been.

"Hey. When this is over," Hellboy said, "you wanna beer?"

". . . I don't drink liquor," Abe said, automatically.

Hellboy sighed. "Yeah, yeah . . . I'll get you to try alcohol someday. Mark my words, it's gonna happen when you least expect it."

* * *

They found a poltergeist in the basement anyway. It was much easier to exorcise than the creature Hellboy encountered, and only threw a toaster at Abe's head.

Abe never took his gloves off on a mission without permission again.

Hellboy did, eventually, get Abraham Sapien stinking drunk on alcohol one miserable day; it was worth it, in the end. 

He met the creature in the mirror again, too. Death comes to us all eventually; but it doesn't always wear the same face.

Oddly enough, everything it promised him came true.

 


End file.
